ok so there.s a right triangle
90 degrees on the bottom left, unknown on the bottom right
and the top angle is 58 degrees
the bottom side is 4.0 in length and the other sides are unknown
solve for all sides and angles

Aug 2nd 2010, 02:31 PM

lvleph

You can use the facts

To get you started assuming is the hypotenuse. Now solve for . You could now solve for the remaining side with either the pythagorean theorem or the cosine relation.

For the angle, use the fact that all angles add to

EDIT: Fixed some typos.

Aug 2nd 2010, 02:33 PM

Math Major

Well, you know that a triangle has 180 degrees, and we've accounted for 90 + 58 = 148 of them. Thus, the remaining angle is 42 degrees.

so sin(58) =4/h and then this means that h=4.72 approximately
according to the following: h=4.0(1/sin(58)=4.72=b correct?
but i tried tangent for locating the adjacent side and my answer was 6.40 which is incorrect
what happened?